Philosophy is critical thinking. Deciding whether an idea is worth believing takes
intellectual and emotional maturity. That’s why you probably didn’t study philosophy
in high school, and it’s one reason many college students don’t study it.

Philosophers do two things that make them unusual: they take both good and bad ideas
seriously, and they think reflectively.

If a judge decides you’re guilty before weighing the evidence, you won’t get a good
hearing. Some ideas that appear bad at first turn out to be good after they are critically
examined. That’s why philosophers take all ideas seriously, even ideas that appear
to be bad.

How do we know what we know? Is a bad mother “unnatural”? How do we tell smut from
art? We must reflect to answer these questions, or think about thinking. To do that,
we must already have learned to think about nature, human history, literature, and
art.

Although philosophy is different from science, history, literature, and art, it is
related to all of them. And just as they have practical value, so does philosophy.